Women who are overweight or obese are more likely to receive a false-positive result on mammography screenings than normal weight women, according to research in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

The article says that obese postmenopausal women have an increased risk of breast cancer compared with postmenopausal women of normal weight, and are often diagnosed with later stages of breast cancer. It has been hypothesized that women with larger breasts may be less able to feel breast lumps, making it more likely that once diagnosed, their breast cancers will be in later stages. However, the influence of obesity on mammography screenings has not been well studied.

Joann G. Elmore, of the University of Washington School of Medicine, and colleagues investigated the relationship between obesity and mammographic accuracy. The researchers found that “Compared with underweight or normal weight women, overweight and obese women were more likely to be recalled for additional tests after adjusting for age and breast density.” Overweight women were 17 percent more likely to be recalled, women in the obese category I group were 27 percent more likely to be recalled, and women in the obese category II and III groups were 31 percent more likely to be recalled.

“A woman’s weight may influence the accuracy of screening mammography in several important ways,” write the authors. “Obese women had more than a 20 percent increased risk of having a false-positive mammogram result compared with underweight and normal weight women. We did not find statistically significant improvements in sensitivity in obese women to counter this increase in false-positive rates. Understanding the quality of mammography among obese women is important, especially since the American population is becoming more obese and obesity is a modifiable risk factor,” the researchers write.